Simón Radowitzky x Osvaldo Bayer

Simón Radowitzky
(1891 - 1956)

"Mil y mil veces maldita tierra aborrecida del crimen, del sufrimiento y del sicario. Bajo el azote helado de tus huracanes gime el hombre; la angustia roe las almas de las víctimas; los abnegados, los Radowitzky, agonizan, mártires de la chusma del máuser, y, sobre el hórrido concierto de sollozos, se oye, siniestra, la carcajada del verdugo."

Así comenzaba un volante del diario anarquista La Protesta, para el 1º de Mayo de 1918, el Día de los Trabajadores. Estoy en Ushuaia, en el edificio del antiguo penal, y hablo sobre Simón Radowitzky ante una concurrencia formada principalmente por gente joven. Nunca hubiera soñado antes que iba a tener esa posibilidad. En los años setenta publiqué un libro que se titulaba Simón Radowitzky, ¿mártir o asesino?, que fue a parar a la hoguera de la dictadura de los Videla y Massera. ¿Quién era ese Simón Radowitzky que había sido una figura legendaria del movimiento obrero en las tres primeras décadas de este siglo y que había pasado veintiún años de su vida en la cárcel, la mayoría de ellos en el penal de Ushuaia, una de las páginas más negras de la historia penal del género humano de la cual tendríamos que avergonzarnos los argentinos? Y que se mantuvo no sólo durante el gobierno de los conservadores liberales sino también durante los tres gobiernos primeros del radicalismo. Los que más cantaron a Simón Radowitzky, llamado el "mártir de Ushuaia", fueron los payadores criollos en los mitines y asambleas obreras.

"Traigo aquí para Simón

este manojo de flores,

del jardín de los dolores

del alma y del corazón:

traigo para aquel varón

valiente y decidido,

este manojo que ha sido

hecho con fibras del alma,

en un momento sin calma

de rebelde convencido."

Así cantaba el payador Manlio por la década del veinte.


Es que Simón había corporizado la violencia de abajo al matar de un preciso bombazo al jefe de policía coronel Ramón L. Falcón después que éste reprimiera brutalmente la manifestación obrera del 1º de Mayo de 1909. Ese día ocurrirá la más grande tragedia obrera hasta ese momento de nuestra historia social. La policía montada al mando del comisario Jolly Medrano, después de que sonara el clarinazo de ataque ordenado por el propio coronel Falcón, se lanza sobre las columnas obreras en la Plaza Lorea. Parece una estampa de la Rusia imperial cuando los cosacos atacaban concentraciones de famélicos proletarios en San Petersburgo o en Moscú. En la historia de las represiones obreras, la del coronel Falcón quedó como una de las más cobardes y alevosas. En un primer momento se cuentan treinta y seis charcos de sangre. Para explicar el drama, el militar traerá el argumento que todavía hoy se emplea en la Argentina: le echa la culpa a los "agitadores". Seguirán días de paro general proclamado por la FORA que tendrá un desarrollo muy violento. Esos días continuará la brutal represión y se seguirán sumando los muertos. Los obreros no se rinden porque:

"Los tiempos ya terminaron

en que hubo feudales bravos

que agarraban a los esclavos

y fiero los azotaron

¡Hoy no! Ya se rebelaron,

Y ese hombre hoy, febril y ardiente

cuando ve que un prepotente

burgués quiere maltratarlo:

cara a cara ha de mirarlo,

cuerpo a cuerpo y frente a frente!"

Así fue. Ese joven judío de apenas 18 años, obrero metalúrgico, esperará al coronel Falcón y pondrá fin a la vida del orgulloso militar que era todo un símbolo para los hombres de uniforme: Falcón había sido el cadete número uno recibido en el Colegio Militar creado por Sarmiento. Simón trata de suicidarse pero es capturado, condenado a muerte y luego, como es menor de edad, a prisión perpetua a cumplir en el penal de Ushuaia, con el agravante de que cada año, en oportunidad de cumplirse cada aniversario de su atentado contra Falcón "deberá ser llevado a reclusión solitaria a pan y agua durante veinte días", como dirá la sentencia.

En la prisión, sólo comparable con la de la Isla del Diablo, Radowitzky se convertirá en el "mártir de la anarquía". Será un místico de la resistencia y del altruismo con los demás presos. Protagonizará una huida legendaria a través de los canales fueguinos hasta que es capturado por un buque de guerra chileno y entregado a los carceleros argentinos. Todos los castigos inimaginables serán entonces para él. Aunque enfermo de tuberculosis, el clima del extremo sur y el aislamiento no lo amedrentan y sigue siendo el defensor de los demás presos para quienes Simón es una personalidad mística y al que admiran casi con respeto religioso.

Sus compañeros de ideas de todo el país no lo abandonaron en ningún momento. Miles de mitines y su nombre siempre en la primera página de sus publicaciones. Hasta que en 1930, Yrigoyen firmará el indulto. Pero el gobierno radical no se aguanta al carismático atentador en territorio argentino y lo expulsa al Uruguay. Allí será detenido y poco después soportará presidio en la isla de Flores. Hasta que en 1936, ya en libertad, marchará a la Guerra Civil española a luchar contra el fascismo de Franco. Morirá en México en 1956 mientras trabajaba de obrero en una fábrica de juguetes, el mejor oficio que puede tener un ser humano.

Me paseo por las celdas del presidio de Ushuaia, cuarenta años después de la muerte del "santo de la anarquía". Los muros del oprobio. Oprobio que años después se iba a trasladar a los dominios de otros carceleros con uniforme militar: los campos de concentración de los Bussi, los Menéndez, los Camps. Pienso en estos verdugos cuando atravieso el portón de salida del ex presidio austral. Y me consuela un pensamiento que me asalta en ese momento. Esos tres jamás tuvieron juglares criollos que les cantaran. De Radowitzky quedan los recuerdos de esas coplas del auténtico pueblo:

"Simón, la fe no desmaya

y el pueblo sí que resiste

te ha de sacar, Radowitzky,

de las mazmorras de Ushuaia."
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Radowitzky, Simon, 1891-1956

A biography of Ukrainian-born anarchist Simon Radowitzky, who assassinated a police chief responsible for the killings of workers.

Simon Radowitzky
Aka Szymon Radowicki, born 10 September or November 1891 - Ukraine, died 29 February 1956 - Mexico

Szymon Radowicki (more usually known in Argentina as Simon Radowitzky) was born on either the 10th of September or November 1891 into a workers family in the Jewish community in the little Ukrainian village of Stepanice (Stapanesso).

The family moved to the industrial city of Ekaterinoslav, because Simon’s father wanted his children to get a good education, and Simon received a rudimentary knowledge of reading, writing and maths. At the age of 10 he had to leave school to work as a blacksmith’s apprentice because of his family’s poverty. He had to sleep on a hard cot under his master’s dining table. From here, he heard the revolutionary conversations of his master’s daughter and her friends.

At the age of 14, he got work in a hardware factory. He took part in his first strike for shorter hours, but was wounded in the chest by a sabre wielded by a Cossack at a street demonstration. He was forced to lie in bed for 6 months of recuperation. He was then sentenced to four months imprisonment for the distribution of leaflets. In 1905, during the revolutionary events, and despite being still only 15 years old, he was elected second secretary of the soviet of the factory where he worked. With the repression that followed the 1905 Revolution, Simon was forced into exile to escape being deported to Siberia.

http://libcom.org/history/1905-the-russian-revolution

He arrived in Argentina in March 1908, where he got work as a mechanic. He read the anarchist press there, in particular La Protesta, the paper of the FORA, the anarcho-syndicalist union that organised among the workers. He associated with a group of Russian anarchist exiles that included the intellectuals Petrov, Karaschin, Ragapelov, Scutz and Buwitz and lived in a tenement with some of these. On the 1st of May 1909, he participated in the big workers’ demonstration in the Plaza Lorea. A cavalry detachment under the command of the police chief Colonel Ramon Falcon charged the crowd and twelve workers were killed and 100 seriously wounded. In the following “Red Week” Falcon pursued his terror against the workers. The police began to fan an anti-Semitic campaign against “Russian Jewish instigators”.

http://libcom.org/library/revolutionary-unionism-latin-america-fora-argentina

Radowitzky, like the German Wilckens was a gentle soul and advocated the use of as little violence as possible in the revolutionary struggle. Like Wilckens, he was horrified and disgusted by the murders of workers and proposed to act. Falcon was returning from the funeral of the prison service, when Radowitzky, lying in wait along the route, threw a bomb into his coach. Falcon and his secretary were mortally wounded. Radowitzky was apprehended not far away. At his trial, the public prosecutor asked for the death penalty. Radowitzky’s cousin was able to produce a birth certificate that showed that Simon was only 18 and thus was excused the death penalty. The judge sentenced him to indefinite imprisonment, and to be put in solitary on bread and water for 20 days near the anniversary of Falcon’s death [for more details on this event see the article The Kind Hearted Executioner - libcom ed.].

http://libcom.org/history/wilckens-kurt-gustav-1886-1923
http://libcom.org/history/wilckens-kurt-gustav-1886-1923
http://libcom.org/history/kind-hearted-executioner

Radowitzky gained the respect of both prisoners and jailers in the National Penitentiary where he was incarcerated. Following a breakout of 13 prisoners that included 2 famous anarchists, Radowitzky was transferred to the dreadful prison of Ushuaia in Patagonia in 1911. He was one of 62 prisoners transported there in the coalbunker of a ship. At the end of the voyage the prisoners were blackened with coal dust and their ankles ulcerated by leg-irons.

At Ushuaia, Radowitzky showed immense strength of character. He stood up to all the humiliations and indignities meted out, and moreover, became the spokesperson of all the prisoners, leading hunger strikes and “protest choirs”. When the prison officials realised his standing among the prisoners they increased their torments. Lanterns were swung in front of his face every half hour at night. He was anally raped by the deputy governor and 3 warders in 1918.

When the anarchist movement in Buenos Aires heard this, they launched a campaign, covering the walls with messages demanding his freedom and publishing a pamphlet on the treatment he had received. Radowitzky “the martyr of Usuaia” became the subjects of songs sung by Creole payadores (songsters) at workers’ meetings and assemblies. The liberal press took up the call for his freedom, but it was not forthcoming. Tired of waiting, some anarchists planned his escape. In league with a smuggler, they got Radowitzky on board his schooner. But the Chilean Navy intercepted them and Radowitzky was returned to prison after just 23 days of freedom. He was punished with solitary confinement and half rations up to January 1921.

The campaign to secure his release continued. Finally in 1930 after 20 years of hell, Radowitzky was released. Expelled from Argentina, he took refuge in neighbouring Uruguay, again taking up the work of a mechanic.

His involvement with the anarchist movement there and the struggle against the dictator Gabriel Terras in 1933 led to his arrest and deportation to the isolated Isla de Flores.

When the Spanish Revolution broke out, Simon headed for Spain in 1936. By now he was in his mid-forties and in poor health. He went to the Aragon front where he fought with the anarchist 28th Division led by Gregorio Jover. Here he met Antonio Casanova, originally from Galicia in North Spain, who had emigrated to Argentina at an early age and had been one of the founders of the Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina in 1935. The two became good friends.

http://libcom.org/tags/spanish-civil-war

Later Simon worked in Barcelona for the cultural division of the mass anarcho-syndicalist union, the CNT. At a time of strict rationing he happened to get hold of a bottle of milk that he immediately gave to a pregnant woman that he felt needed it more than him.

With Franco’s victory, he had to flee to France, where like so many others, he was interned in the concentration camp at St. Cyprien. From there, he got away to Mexico. Here, a poet managed to get him a job as a clerk at the Uruguayan Consulate. At the end of the World War, he worked in the Mexican branch of the International Rescue and Relief Committee to help political refugees in Europe, alongside the German anarchist Augustin Souchy, sending CARE food packages. He wrote for anarchist publications in Mexico.

http://libcom.org/tags/world-war-2

Simon’s last years were plagued by ill health. The prison years had taken their toll. When not in hospital, he lived in a shabby attic of an apartment building.

He died of a heart attack on February 29, 1956 whilst working in a toy factory.

“With Radowitzky’s passing one of the last social revolutionaries of the Russian Revolution of 1905, one of the finest idealists of the international labour movement was gone.” - Augustin Souchy.

http://libcom.org/history/1905-the-russian-revolution

Postscript: In November 2003, a popular assembly, meeting in the Plaza named after Ramon Falcon, voted to change its name to that of Simon Radowitzky.

Taken from Organise! Magazine of the Anarchist Federation
Edited by libcom
http://libcom.org/history/articles/1891-1956-simon-radowitzky

Película: Un mundo mejor, la historia de Simón Radowitzky (2010)

Título original: Un mundo mejor
Año: 2010
País: Argentina
Duración: 32 minutos

Un mundo mejor, narra la historia de Simón Radowitzky, militante obrero anarquista ucrano-argentino. Fue uno de los más célebres presos del penal de Ushuaia, donde fue condenado a reclusión perpetua por el atentado con bomba que mató al jefe de policía Ramón Lorenzo Falcón, responsable de la brutal represión de la semana roja de 1909 en Buenos Aires.

--VIDEO
http://vimeo.com/15689127

May Day Massacre - 100 years ago: Simón Radowitzky, Anarchist and Legend

May 1, 1909. Police kill thirty workers in a South American city. The workers are gunned down and violently beaten during a protest to demand an eight hour work day and remember the Hay Market Martyrs. Argentina's capital, Buenos Aires, was the scene of this massacre targeting the anarchist-labor movement which proliferated throughout the region through the beginning of the 20th century.

One of Argentina's first unions, the anarcho-syndicalist Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA) organized the May Day protest in 1909, joining workers around the world mobilizing on May 1 to demand the institution of an 8-hour-long workday and commemorate the Chicago martyrs; Parsons, Engel, Spies, Fischer, executed by hanging at the hands of the United States government and Lingg, who committed suicide in his jail cell. Buenos Aires police commissioner, Coronel Ramón L. Falcón, legendary for his anti-anarchist and immigrant tendencies, gave the order to brutally repress the peaceful May Day protest.

http://www.zcommunications.org/may-day-massacre-100-years-ago-sim-and-oacute-n-radowitzky-anarchist-and-legend-by-marie-trigona